


The Blinding Properties of Love

by WriteItSmall (scribblemyname)



Series: Comment Fic LiveJournal Stories [56]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Community: comment_fic, Established Relationship, F/M, Futurefic, Identity, Marriage, Romance, unabashed fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 06:18:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2014278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/WriteItSmall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha looked in the mirror, frowning, trying to see this person Clint described.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Blinding Properties of Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tigriswolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/gifts).



> For the prompt [Avengers movieverse, Clint/Natasha, who you are is not where you've been; who you are is not what you did](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/541311.html?thread=76934783#t76934783) by tigriswolf on the Comment Fic LJ comm.

When Clint walked into the bathroom, Natasha was standing in front of the mirror, wrapped in a towel and staring at her own reflection. She met his reflected gaze as he came behind her to wrap his arms around her waist.  
  
“You know what I see?” he asked quietly.  
  
He didn’t miss much, never had. Even years after they had settled into training their successors, young Avengers, and retired from the field, years after age should have begun to dim his legendary sight, Clint had never been more Hawkeye than in the quiet moments like this when he held her and looked into her eyes until he puzzled out what was going through her head.  
  
Natasha looked at him questioningly.  
  
Clint obliged. “I see a mother.” He kissed her shoulder. “And wife. I see the most compassionate, caring, loyal, capable woman I have ever met.”  
  
Ten years ago, she would have retorted some comment about the blinding properties of love. It wasn’t ten years ago. Her life had changed, she had wielded Mjolnir for a brief time in a battle, and her ledger finally was as clean as she’d ever be able to make it. She looked in the mirror, frowning, trying to see this person he described.  
  
“I still see the Black Widow,” she said. She considered herself candidly. Her own children had never really known that side of her, but even now, she would don it easily to protect those she loved.  
  
“Who you are isn’t who you’ve been or what you’ve done,” Clint told her. He rested his chin on her head and waited a beat for her to acknowledge hearing him. “You are the person you’ve made yourself to be, and no one who has ever worked with you or been your friend would call you that now.”  
  
She blinked. She stared at her reflection, the still red hair, the mouth she could still turn to lies. But there was truth there and much closer to the surface than it had ever been before.  
  
She turned in his arms, stood up on tiptoes, and gave him a kiss. “You never did play by the rules,” she murmured.  
  
“Would that be the rule that no one gets to know the real you or the rule that no one makes you fall in love?” He smiled softly, eyes crinkling with good humor.  
  
“Your children were born degenerates,” she countered. She had fallen in love with them before she could hold them in her arms.  
  
“They never had a chance,” he agreed and finally kissed her.  
  
She didn’t feel like the Black Widow. At all.


End file.
